Maybe it’s me, but there seems to be something deceptive in the way this Providence Journal article presents controversy over progressive Democrat State Representative Edith Ajello’s legislation to lift restrictions on abortion under state law.  Consider:

The [LifeNews] article also contends that the Ajello bill “would even repeal the state partial-birth abortion ban and fetal homicide law, which provides justice to pregnant mothers whose unborn babies are killed by abusive partners, drunken drivers or others whose illegal actions cause the death of the unborn baby.”

Ajello says the article is part of a national campaign in states where there is a push on to codify Roe v. Wade into law. She said a number of “misled″ people from as far away as Ohio called her last week to rail against her legislation, based on their belief that “infants born alive in an abortion procedure would be left on the table to die.”

“It’s not true,″ she said, citing a Rhode Island law titled “Care of babies born alive during attempted abortions’′ that her legislation would leave intact. The law holds “any physician, nurse, or other licensed medical person who knowingly and intentionally fails to provide reasonable medical care and treatment to an infant born alive in the course of an abortion [who then dies] … guilty of the crime of manslaughter. ”

While her bill, if passed, would repeal Rhode Island’s “partial-birth abortion law,″ which a federal judge declared was so vague it was unenforceable and unconstitutional, she notes her legislation does not affect a superseding 2003 federal ban on “partial birth abortions.”

As reported, the LifeNews article makes two points:  Ajello’s legislation would repeal the state’s partial-birth abortion ban and remove the penalty for killing an unborn child as part of an assault (or other illegal and harmful action) hurting the mother.  Kathy Gregg follows Ajello in distracting from the question with commentary on laws related to children who are born despite attempts to abort them.

The next attempt at distraction is the federal ban on partial-birth abortion, which the federal government could repeal at any time.  Notice something:  The entire premise of Ajello’s legislation is that the federal government might in some way or another change its laws to make abortion a state issue, which she says requires the change to state law.  Yet, she hides behind federal law (that could similarly be repealed) as an excuse for eliminating this ban.

The article completely ignores the other point from the LifeNews article.  It almost feels like the Providence Journal has revived PolitiFact when it presents two statements that are true, but casting shade on them with distractions.

On a side note, while refreshing my memory about the federal partial-birth abortion ban, I came across this 2007 Boston Globe article and, once again, find it difficult to believe that anybody can really believe this is OK:

In response to the Supreme Court decision upholding the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, many abortion providers in Boston and around the country have adopted a defensive tactic. To avoid any chance of partially delivering a live fetus, they are injecting fetuses with lethal drugs before procedures.

That clinical shift in late-term abortions goes deeply against the grain, some doctors say: It poses a slight risk to the woman and offers her no medical benefit. …

The injections are generally done in abortions after 18 or 20 weeks gestation. (Massachusetts bans virtually all abortions at and beyond the 24th week, except to protect the life or health of the mother.) Medical staff inject either the heart drug digoxin or potassium chloride, a potentially poisonous salt also used in state executions.

“To avoid any chance of partially delivering a live fetus, they are injecting fetuses with lethal drugs [also used for the execution of criminals] before procedures.”  I may be missing some of the niceties of the process, but this appears to mean that the doctors are executing the unborn baby before partially delivering him or her in order to suck out his or her brain and rip the body limb from limb.